As all parents know, occupying the attention of young children when they are confined to a relatively small space in which limited physical activity is possible is one of the major challenges of day-to-day life with children in modern times. In the United States, the difficulty of this has been exacerbated for the last 40 years which have witnessed the widespread proliferation of television as a principal mechanism for occupying the attention, or dulling the sensibilities, of children when they are not engaged in outdoor activities. Thus, in modern times, parents are often faced with the aphorism that the confined child can become the mischievous or complaining child.
As most parents know, the problems of keeping peace within a family group in a confined space can be particularly trying when family groups are traveling in automobiles. In earlier times, this was somewhat less of a problem as children had a fair amount of freedom to roam throughout the interior of an automobile. However, modern sensitivity to safety issues has led to a situation in which children are essentially confined to a particular seating area while traveling in an automobile. In particular, the great increase in probability of survival and avoidance of serious injury in the event of an automotive crash when a child is securely fastened within a child safety seat (for younger children) or restrained by shoulder and lap restraints has made it difficult to provide a child with the opportunity to entertain himself or herself during long automotive trips.
Every parent who has passed through the single digit years with a child is also aware of the problems associated with provision of materials for reading, drawing, and the like to a child in a car seat. While free standing writing surfaces for holding paper, or upon which books can be placed are used by many parents, all parents know that children invariably drop something at the height of some crisis of the automotive driver maneuvering the vehicle through traffic. This leads to a frustrated child who cannot reach his or her books, crayons, or whatever material was dropped and a parent who is understandably and properly reluctant to turn his or her attention from the road to perform acts of contortion to try to retrieve the dropped object from the floorboard of the car.
Common experience also teaches that one of the more perilous activities for nerves, clothing, and upholstery is to have children consume beverages in a moving vehicle. They almost invariably forget the experiential laws of physics that govern continued movement of a drink cup in a forward direction when the surrounding vehicle is decelerating as brakes are applied. It is often true that accidents of this type occur as the child becomes truly engrossed in some worthwhile activity such as reading or drawing and ceases to pay appropriate attention to a drink container from which they are consuming a beverage.
While the foregoing has been presented with a bit of levity, it is well recognized that the situations described do lead to stressful interactions between parent and child and frustration for both. Particularly when children are confined to more rearward seats in a car or van, it can literally be impossible for a parent to assist a child in retrieving a dropped object without having to locate an appropriate and safe place to pull the vehicle out of traffic, exit the vehicle and reach into the portion of same occupied by the child to retrieve the dropped book, pencil, crayon, or similar object.
Thus, there is a need for an improved arrangement for holding work and play materials for children, as well as drinks, in an automotive or similar setting in a way that allows the child to make maximum use of materials at hand while minimizing the probability of dropping or spilling the materials the child needs to manipulate during car or air travel. It is also desirable to have such a device that is readily usable by a child in environments other than an automobile or airplane, both for purposes of serving as a portable desk and for getting the child used to working with the apparatus while not in the car, so as to be more comfortable and familiar with same while in a car.
A number of prior art attempts to fill this need have been proposed, all of which have some utility, but none of which provide the beneficial combination of structure and function provided by the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,940,003 to Mayhew et al. shows a table for use with a car seat. It includes a tray with a first level surface and a depressed center area for holding food and other items. A pair of circular holes with various sized gripping inserts are provided to accommodate beverage cans and cups of different sizes. An arrangement is made for passing a seat belt through the legs of the apparatus. This particular apparatus is designed to sit on the seat with a seat belt dedicated to holding it passing through its legs to secure it in place. In a typical back seat environment with two children, the inventors of the apparatus contemplate that it would occupy a center seat position and be secured by a conventional center seat belt. While it has multiple drink holders, it does not truly serve as a work station since it is not designed to provide access to a work surface directly in front of a child user.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,795,210 to Milat shows a portable table that is designed to provide a work or play station for a child traveling in an automobile. It includes a pair of parallel planks that serve as legs. The planks have contoured lower edges designed to fit on the contour of a seat. In one embodiment, the leg on one side is shorter than the leg on the other to accommodate having the shorter leg supported by an arm rest. It shows slots through the plank-like legs for accommodating the seat belt and an auxiliary strap disclosed as being for attaching the apparatus to a car seat. It includes a drink holding orifice and a bin to hold a limited number of pencils or crayons oriented vertically.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,512,503 to Gioso shows an elaborate organizer for attaching to the seat of an automobile for holding a wealth of devices, particularly of adult orientation, including cigarettes, tape cassettes and the like. Additionally, other lap tables and tray tables have been known in the art.
One of the main shortcomings of the prior art children's tables described above is their inclusion of peripheral rims about a working surface. While in principle this sounds like a good idea in that it keeps pencils, crayons and other paraphernalia from sliding off a work surface, experienced parents know that it does not conform to the way children tend to write and draw. In particular, many, if not most, children less than ten have a tendency to sprawl over a work area when writing or drawing, with forearms and elbows laid out on the work surface.
Additionally, while it is certainly desirable to have a portable work station for a child to use in an automobile be securable to a child's car seat or to a seat belt, arrangements such as those in the prior art for which there is a fixed geometric relationship between the contour of an automobile seat or child seat and the orientation of the work surface is much less desirable than an arrangement in which the child can manipulate the position of the work surface relatively easily. Furthermore, it is very desirable to have an arrangement where the child can copy or draw pictures based on the contents of a preexisting book or picture. Thus, it is desirable to have a portable child's work station, usable in an automobile, which will accommodate apparatus for holding a book in an open position.
In addition to holding a child's work or play utensils in usable positions while a portable work station is in use, it is also desirable that it readily accommodate materials to be carried from place to place when the portable work station is being transported. While the prior art work stations described above are designed to accommodate use in an automobile, they do not address the need to provide easily operable portable storage for the child's work and play materials that keeps the materials used at the work station physically together with the work station.
In summary, there is a need in the art for an improved thoughtfully designed work station for a child, particularly one usable in a confined area such as an automobile or airplane seat. There is also a need to provide such a work station that is suitable to the way children actually draw and write as well as to provide child operable storage for work materials such as paper, books, pencils, and crayons while the portable work station is in transport. It is further desirable to have such a work station that is readily transportable by a child so that the child may carry it from dwelling to automobile and vice versa. That the present invention overcomes the above cited drawbacks in the prior art and fulfills the above described needs will be become apparent from the following description.